Jasmine Blu
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Lovelies, the first rule of existing on this fiery hellscape of a globe we call Earth is: always trust your gut.
If you can’t take anything else away from You’re Not Supposed to Be Here, you should reach that conclusion. Never come between a woman and her intuition; actual survival may be on the line.
Also, it’s a great time for Chrishell Stause when a new season of Selling Sunset is airing and the queer Lifetime thriller she stars in makes its debut.
Chrishell Stause is living her best life, yes?
Unfortunately, her character, Zoe, was NOT during the majority of this film, and in true Lifetime cheesy thriller fashion, she had a girl wanting to throw popcorn at the television.
Zoe and Kennedy were so pretty but so dumb sometimes, bless their hearts.
It’s been a minute since we’ve had these types of deliciously dramatic, cheesy, fun thrillers since we’ve been focused on the True Crime Slate.
While it’s something that shouldn’t have to be said or acknowledged, it’s particularly great that they gave the LBGTQ community the same treatment right down to the ridiculous choices by the characters to drive the plot.
Because the second they rolled into town and had that awkward treatment, they should have high-tailed it out of there faster than a bat out of hell.
All the signs were there to leave that place and never look back, but Kennedy, mainly, and Zoe insisted on soldiering in. If that wasn’t bad enough, Zoe lured her trusty best friend from a nice date with a hot guy to this town without even warning him about how seemingly homophobic and creepy it was.
Zoe was sweet as heck but a terrible damn friend!
And Kennedy was such a distracted wife. It was so frustrating to watch this woman constantly prioritize a job with who would later be revealed as a cult-leading psychopath ahead of her marriage and impending family.
Kennedy was inattentive, easily distracted, work-focused and oriented, and totally dismissive of Zoe at almost every turn.
It was way too easy for her to dismiss Zoe’s emotional state or anything she expressed as her being “sensitive” or “overly emotional due to pregnancy hormones.”
Knowing a bit of their backstory and how they had tried to have a child before and lost it, it made sense that Zoe would be far more sensitive and worried about this pregnancy, especially as the due date loomed.
They were nearly at the finish line, and the mere idea that they could get that close to having their child and something would go horribly wrong was reasonable and understandable.
It was hard to fully understand where Kennedy’s head was in all of this. She was so career-oriented that it often read as if she had little interest in her wife and future child and that maybe she had agreed to the kid thing for the sake of Zoe and not because it was something she wanted herself.
And we never got to the bottom of why Kennedy was so driven in her work life. Was it out of career ambitions? Did she want to earn and provide a nice cushion for themselves because she cared about her family so much and wanted them to have the best life?
Was she simply the Type-A personality type who lived for work and not much else? Was she someone who wanted to prove herself and was intent on combatting sexism that plagues professional workspaces?
Often, it felt as if she was guilty of the latter. She constantly was trying to prove to Robert that she was the woman for the job and could do it all and that her family life wouldn’t keep her from being at the top of her game as an employee.
In her defense, when she heard about the previous woman and why she left, it’s understandable that she would feel compelled to prove that having a family didn’t make her a detriment to the job.
But little did she know that she was screwed either way in this regard. Robert was still judging her regardless, and her loyalty to his company was more of a reason he wanted to lure her and Zoe to that cabin and take their child.
It was really the perfect allegory for working women in that Kennedy would have been punished professionally if she prioritized her family — written off as a liability and not dedicated to the job.
However, by being just as career-oriented and driven as any man, Robert was writing her off as a terrible prospect for a mother and, thus, a hindrance to her future child and a contributor to the fall of society and the family structure.
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Of course, the fact that she was in a same-sex marriage only fueled him further in that regard.
Kennedy is a woman who stands her ground, and that’s worth respecting. It’s admirable when someone is unapologetic about who they are and doesn’t want to make themselves small or invisible for anyone.
But it’s also frustrating on some levels when that comes at the expense of safety. There were so many signs of why they should’ve heeded Carla’s warning early on and left that town.
Kennedy wasn’t immune to that discomfort one experiences in a place when the vibes aren’t right, and all your senses tingle. However, she was too determined to ignore it.
One of her most puzzling moments was when the server brought her the coffee cup that said “Leave” on it. Not only did she stay longer than she should’ve, but she still took that coffee with her and proceeded to drink it anyway.
At best, someone in the coffee shop put something in it or spat in it, and at worst, which is what happened, she was literally drugged.
Why would you drink the coffee after that warning, Kennedy? That’s not bravery, babe; that’s stupidity and zero sense of self-preservation!
From early on, it was apparent that in this creepy little communal town, the bizarre treatment Kennedy and Zoe received was less about their sexual identity. However, they certainly dealt with that and more to do with Zoe carrying a child.
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They wanted that baby, and they would do whatever it took to get ahold of it.
Kennedy had quite the journey in making a turnaround and realizing the importance of putting her family first. Nothing good came from all the work and time she devoted to Robert Henderson and his company.
One thing a job will consistently remind you of is that you’re expendable. In this case, it was quite literally as Kennedy was on the verge of ending up toes up in that mine and her name written in a book of all the dead people who came before her.
She also, fortunately, came around to working with and learning to appreciate Adam. Their fraught relationship was so entertaining and lowkey on brand.
Kennedy was channeling her inner Arizona Robbins from Grey’s Anatomy with how put off she was by Adam’s existence in Zoe’s life. And one has to wonder if there was some resentment over the fact that he was the biological donor of their baby.
Adam was a good friend, too good.
On the one hand, he somehow managed to fall into both the gay and Black best friend trope rolled up in one.
But on the other hand, the film didn’t fall into the infamous “Bury Your Gays” trope, and we got our happy ending with all three of them alive, well, happy, and ready to pour all their love into sweet baby Ava.
You love to see it!
Adam was an underrated character, albeit underdeveloped in the way that sidekicks too often are.
And it was annoying as hell that Zoe kept feeding the tension between Adam and Kennedy by putting him in the middle of her relationship issues all the time or luring him to a creepy small town where they were uncomfortable around gay people. He ended up stuck in a sauna and shot!
Adam could have comfortably been on another date with that hot guy he was hitting it off with; dammit, Zoe!
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All three characters showed an alarming level of letting their guards down when the vibes weren’t right.
Zoe was on edge for a bit, understandably so, but then she allowed Kennedy to talk her down and out of things, and she leaned too heavily into befriending Penny and her brood of cult members.
One has to wonder why you would take strange herbs from someone who creeps you out. Penny’s introduction to them was busting out of the woods in the middle of the night with a brood of mostly silent people wearing linen and bearing literal fruits and veggies.
Nothing about that should’ve led to yoga classes, herbal teas, and retreats!
As a firm rule, if six people are in a herd of individuals approaching you to get to know you, and only two do all the talking as the others look on creepily, it’s probably not a good sign.
The cult vibes were way too strong for the women to get entangled in their mess.
It wasn’t surprising that Penny was inducing Zoe’s pregnancy. In some ways, you can understand the motivations of this small town and where the mining issues essentially left people sterilized and unable to bear children.
Naturally, to sustain the town and their livelihood, they’d want to pursue options that bring children into their world. But stealing babies is in a whole other stratosphere.
We know why there’s never any prenatal stuff in the stores!
Penny and Robert as scheming siblings was a nice twist, though, and it was hilarious to watch them constantly bicker and attack each other amid this evil and sinister plan.
Robert leading an entire cult while also running a lucrative company in the city only showed how much of a hypocrite he was.
He got to live two different lives and leave the others in poorer states under the guise of bankrolling their communal experiment!
Poor Ava was ten minutes old and trying to adapt to being outside the womb, and they were already putting her in leave-covered beds and holding her up like the second coming.
The poor baby was probably wondering who the weird man was. Meanwhile, Zoe was a wonder woman hobbling around after they snatched her baby out of her and left her hanging.
Did they even complete the birthing process? And let’s give it up for the material of that dress she was wearing that didn’t hold a single stain!
Zoe being the one to take down Robert was the most satisfying conclusion for something like this, and the gas station woman, who Zoe initially thought was the weirdest one, being the one to come to their aid, was a total win!
She was hilarious, too, realizing far too late that a bunch of pregnant ladies come to that town, but none of them ever leave.
And shoutout to Robert for one of the darkly funniest moments of the film, running his own sister over like a speed bump in pursuit of that baby.
Poor Penny realized far too late that her brother was full of boloney and didn’t give a damn about any of them!
It’s a special kind of cold-blooded to run over your dying sister like she’s roadkill!
You’re Not Supposed to Be Here was pure, campy thriller fun.
Over to you, Lifetime Fanatics. Did you enjoy this baby-stealing cult thriller? What were your favorite parts? Hit the comments!
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is an insomniac who spends late nights and early mornings binge-watching way too many shows and binge-drinking way too much tea. Her eclectic taste makes her an unpredictable viewer with an appreciation for complex characters, diverse representation, dynamic duos, compelling stories, and guilty pleasures. You’ll definitely find her obsessively live-tweeting, waxing poetic, and chatting up fellow Fanatics and readers. Follow her on X.